When you’re a kid, there’s nothing likely to make you more intolerant of other human beings than the fact that your neighbours are unacceptably DIFFERENT to you. Their houses smell different - and not in a nice way -and they have different habits and beliefs that can only be seen by you as ODD, simply because they are unlike YOUR family’s.
Suburban North London was never a hotbed of sectarianism and my parents were not the most devout of Catholics, but I found myself unable to refrain from a sanctimonious gushing of disdain towards the people who lived either side of us simply because they were Protestants and therefore WRONG. In one case, the dad Alan, had married a Jewish woman and this confused me as to what the hell their two daughters were. Did they believe that Jesus was God’s son or not? With naïve boldness, I once asked him that, and he gave me some liberal and reasoned response that was far too flimsy and vague for an indoctrinated fundamentalist papist like myself. Given that they had white walls and white cushiony furniture in their lounge and he was a softly-spoken articulate and bespectacled corduroy-trousers-wearing pseudo-intellectual, I decided that he must just be a WEIRDO. A hippy version of Graeme Garden from The Goodies with decidedly misguided beliefs.
On the other side of us, Les and Margaret’s family were Methodists. Which wasn’t even proper Protestants as far as I was concerned. Particularly as they got their kids Christened when they were about ten years old, instead of babies. They could have died any time before that and ended up in Hell, due to this lax procrastination, assuming that St Peter even LETS Methodists into Heaven. I supposed they might have had a less salubrious section to themselves, with not-so-comfortable clouds and less to eat.
Les and Margaret were also NORTHERN so they talked funny. They holidayed in Skegness, which sounded quite grim, even though I think Kevin Keegan was born there or played for them (or was that Scunthorpe?) Les drove a brown Princess and also owned an A-Team style van (this was before the A-Team, I should add) which he used to transport JUMBLE. As a generally annoying DO-GOODER, Les helped the local Cub-Scout Pack by collecting crap from local residents for the annual Jumble Sale. We reckoned that he kept the decent stuff himself and this was his sole motivation. Once a year their dining room would be a TETRIS-style maze (before Tetris of course) of boxes and old tat and you couldn’t see where you were putting your feet. I once trod in their dog’s freshly crimped-out plop, while wearing my new tassled-loafers, because it was hidden between boxes of Bric-a-Brac. I hated Les for that, just that one fact, that one poo that went all over my nice new shoes and was an arse to clean off; and I hate Jumble sales to this day as a consequence.
They had two dogs. Muffin, some kind of yappy little mutt, should have been called Guffin. We had to look after him in our house one weekend and he spent the whole time farting really stinky dog farts that smelt like gaseous dog shit, just as you’d expect. Their other dog was an Afghan with more bounce in it than sack of rubber balls. It was totally out of control and after a while slipped its lead and ran off, never to be seen again. Not that I blame it. We had smaller pets, like a hamster and a tortoise, but Les killed our tortoise. It was put into hibernation in his garage with their tortoise and he took ours out first to see if it was time for it to wake up. It wasn’t and it died. Because of Les. The cunt.
Les and Margaret had 4 sons with skinheads, tattoos, a penchant for mild criminal activity and an inability to sleep with the light off. When me and my brother had to sleep round, apart from having to share beds with the sons who were our age – beds which smelt disgustingly different to our own – this refusal to turn out the light at bedtime was pathetic and annoying. And ODD. Bloody odd people.
And so it is that you grow up thinking this of your neighbours: Urgh, why have you got that in your house? Urgh, why do you eat that? Urgh, why do you smell funny? Urgh, why do you think that? I’m all for embracing diversity nowadays and I have Alan’s liberal tolerance and reasoned mind (but not his corduroy trousers). But to be honest, despite all that, I still think you’re all ODD fuckers for being different to me, whether you live next door or not.
